Love as Two Solitudes: The space Between Breaths

Have you ever loved someone, yet felt the distance between you like a quiet presence?

Love is often imagined, especially when we are young. It’s imagined as closeness, merging, becoming one. But what if real love is about holding space for another, protecting their solitude, their aloneness, while honouring our own?

Rilke once wrote (in Letter 7, Letters to a Young Poet).
”Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and greet each other.”

Not dissapearing into each other.
Not demanding understanding.
Not pulling someone into our orbit so tightly that they lose their own way.

But standing side by side—close enough to share the warmth of each other’s presence, but far enough that each person belongs to themselves.

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The Space That Makes Love Real

We sometimes fear distance in love.

A pause in a conversation, whether it’s just now, or in the space of years.
A moment of separate thought, another’s day dreams.
Their need for aloneness.

But what if distance is not absence?
What if space is not a separation, but sanctuary?

Maybe love is not the act of always wanting, always reaching—
but a learning how to stand steadfast and still together.

Of knowing that between us, there is a quiet space—
not empty, but full of breath, possibility, aliveness.
And the freedom to return to each other, again and again.

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Between Breaths

In the moment between our breaths,
our eyes touch—
an anticipation of fingertips,
the need to be drawn into light,
to let our mindscape warm.

We know the passion of poetry,
secrets in glances.
Oh, where to from here?

I feel like I am racing time,
like it's out in the streets,
dancing you too fast.

And all I want is to be beside you,
needing nothing
but the hush between our breaths.

There are other ways to find silence.
Peace is fragile
when yesterday and tomorrow
pull at us
like lost lovers.

Oh, hold onto the moment.
Don't dare move—
you’ll startle the wild animals,
the secret spirits that watch us,
planning our next steps.

Your bed is here now,
but the scent of wilderness lingers
as we wake.

Where Do You Feel This Kind of Love?

Maybe it’s with a lover who understands your need for silence.
Maybe it’s in a friendship that asks for nothing, but gives everything.
Maybe it’s in the way the ocean meets the shore—never clinging, always returning.
Maybe it’s in the way the wind meets the trees or in the way you love Jesus or the Buddha.

Maybe this is love—not a thing to have, but a presence that moves between everything, a spirit, greeting us softly, letting us be ourselves.

There is always a delicate balance between holding on and letting go. Maybe love is learning to live in that place.

💌 If reflections like this resonate with you, I invite you to join Poetic Inclinations—a space for poetry, love, and longing.

First draft - circa 2002